British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College
London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues
including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015
people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British
public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:

- Benefit fraud: the
public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently
claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is
fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.

-
Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of
recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent. Even
including illegal immigrants, the figure is only about 15 per cent. On
the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30
per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.

-
Crime: some 58 per cent of people do not believe crime is falling, when
the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime
were 19 per cent lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53 per cent lower
than in 1995. Some 51 per cent think violent crime is rising, when it
has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2
million in 2012.

- Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher
than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are
thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the
amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.

Among the other surprising
figures are that 26 per cent of people think foreign aid is in the top
three items the Government spends money on (it actually makes up just
1.1 per cent of expenditure), and that 29 per cent of people think more
is spent on Jobseekers' Allowance than pensions.

In fact we spend 15 times more on pensions - £4.9 billion on JSA vs £74.2 billion on pensions.

Hetan
Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society, said: "Our
data poses real challenges for policymakers. How can you develop good
policy when public perceptions can be so out of kilter with the
evidence?

"We need to see three things happen. First, politicians
need to be better at talking about the real state of affairs of the
country, rather than spinning the numbers. Secondly, the media has to
try and genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to
sensationalise.

"And finally we need better teaching of
statistical literacy in schools, so that people get more comfortable in
understanding evidence."

Bobby Duffy, the managing director of
Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute, said: "A lack of trust in
government information is also very evident in other questions in the
survey - so 'myth-busting' is likely to prove a challenge on many of
these issues. But it is still useful to understand where people get
their facts most wrong."

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The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich.

We need to remember that, psychopaths and other personality disordered individuals really have no choice but to be what they are; they are like forces of nature. But normal human beings DO have a choice as to whether they will accept abuse or not. By accepting abuse, they give power to the psychopaths to abuse others so it is not just a matter of self-preservation; it is a matter of making sure that our children have a future. It seems that, in a world where the people cannot or will not, rise up against psychopathy in power, the Cosmos will do it for them, and take them out as well for their silence and their weakness. The bottom line is, nobody and no event is going to “save” anyone. It is only human beings, individually and collectively, who have the power to BE salvation.” – Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Plans for control of the evil forces that have been loosed in the world, attempts to compensate the evil- doing by good works or sympathy for the victims, efforts to safeguard the peace or to effect ideal solutions of all the material problems involved, can do little to change the nature of the situation. The real problem, namely, the question of what can be done for civilization in face of the nonhuman forces arising from the collective unconscious in thousands or rather millions of individual persons, will remain untouched. However, if only one human being has met and solved the problem in himself, he will be a living demonstration of a solution. Such an individual carries with him the germ of a renaissance of the spiritual values of mankind.

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